In Alien Flesh

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  In Alien Flesh

  by Gregory Benford

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  Science Fiction

  * * *

  Fictionwise, Inc.

  www.fictionwise.com

  Copyright ©1978 by Gregory Benford

  First published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, September 1978

  NOTICE: This work is copyrighted. It is licensed only for use by the original purchaser. Making copies of this work or distributing it to any unauthorized person by any means, including without limit email, floppy disk, file transfer, paper print out, or any other method constitutes a violation of International copyright law and subjects the violator to severe fines or imprisonment.

  * * *

  I.

  —green surf lapping, chilling—

  Reginri's hand jerked convulsively on the sheets. His eyes were closed.

  —silver coins gliding and turning in the speckled sky, eclipsing the sun—

  The sheets were a clinging swamp. He twisted in their grip.

  —a chiming song, tinkling cool rivulets washing his skin—

  He opened his eyes.

  A yellow blade of afternoon sunlight hung in the room, dust motes swimming through it. He panted in shallow gasps. Belej was standing beside the bed.

  “They came again, didn't they?” she said, almost whispering.

  “Ye ... yes.” His throat was tight and dry.

  “This can't go on, darling. We thought you could sleep better in the daytime, with everyone out in the fields, but—"

  “Got to get out of here,” he mumbled. He rolled out of bed and pulled on his black work suit. Belej stood silent, blinking rapidly, chewing at her lower lip. Reginri fastened his boots and slammed out of the room. His steps thumped hollowly on the planking. She listened to them hurrying down the hallway. They paused; the airless silence returned. Then the outer door creaked, banged shut.

  She hurried after him.

  She caught up near the rim of the canyon, a hundred meters from the log buildings. He looked at her. He scratched at his matted hair and hunched his shoulders forward.

  “That one was pretty bad,” he said woodenly.

  “If they keep on getting worse..."

  “They won't."

  “We hope. But we don't know that. If I understood what they're about..."

  “I can't quite describe it. They're different each time. The feeling seems the same, even though...” Some warmth had returned to his voice. “It's hard."

  Belej sat down near the canyon edge. She looked up at him. Her eyebrows knitted together above large dark eyes. “All right,” she said, her mood shifting suddenly, an edge coming into her voice. “One, I don't know what these nightmares are about. Two, I don't know where they come from. That horrible expedition you went on, I suppose, but you're not even clear about that. Three, I don't know why you insisted on joining their dirty expedition in the—"

  “I told you, dammit. I had to go."

  “You wanted the extra money,” Belej said flatly. She cupped her chin in a tiny hand.

  “It wasn't extra money, it was any money.” He glowered at the jagged canyon below them. Her calm, accusing manner irritated him.

  “You're a pod cutter. You could have found work."

  “The season was bad. This was last year, remember. Rates weren't good."

  “But you had heard about this Sasuke and Leo, what people said about them—"

  “Vanleo, that's the name. Not Leo."

  “Well, whatever. You didn't have to work for them."

  “No, of course not,” he said savagely. “I could've busted my ass on a field-hopper in planting season, twelve hours a day for thirty units pay, max. And when I got tired of that, or broke a leg, maybe I could've signed on to mold circuitry like a drone.” He picked up a stone and flung it far over the canyon edge. “A great life."

  Belej paused a long moment. At the far angular end of the canyon a pink mist seeped between the highest peaks and began spilling downward, gathering speed. Zeta Reticuli still rode high in the mottled blue sky, but a chill was sweeping up from the canyon. The wind carried an acrid tang.

  He wrinkled his nose. Within an hour they would have to move inside. The faint reddish haze would thicken. It was good for the plant life of northern Persenuae, but to human lungs the fog was an itching irritant.

  Belej sighed. “Still,” she said softly, “you weren't forced to go. If you had known it would be so—"

  “Yes,” he said, and something turned in his stomach. “If anybody had known."

  II

  At first it was not the Drongheda that he found disquieting. It was the beach itself and, most of all, the waves.

  They lapped at his feet with a slow, sucking energy, undermining the coarse sand beneath his boots. They began as little ripples that marched in from the gray horizon and slowly hissed up the black beach. Reginri watched one curl into greenish foam farther out; the tide was falling.

  “Why are they so slow?” he said.

  Sasuke looked up from the carry-pouches. “What?"

  “Why do the waves take so long?"

  Sasuke stopped for a moment and studied the ponderous swell, flecked with yellow waterweed. An occasional large wave broke and splashed on the sharp lava rocks farther out. “I never thought about it,” Sasuke said. “Guess it's the lower gravity."

  “Uh-hum.” Reginri shrugged.

  A skimmer fish broke water and snapped at something in the air. Somehow, the small matter of the waves unnerved him. He stretched restlessly in his skinsuit.

  “I guess the low-gee sim doesn't prepare you for everything,” he said. Sasuke didn't hear; he was folding out the tappers, coils and other gear.

  Reginri could put it off no longer. He fished out his binocs and looked at the Drongheda.

  At first it seemed like a smooth brown rock, water-worn and timeless. And the reports were correct: it moved landward. It rose like an immense blister on the rippled sea. He squinted, trying to see the dark circle of the pithole. There, yes, a shadowed blur ringed with dappled red. At the center, darker, lay his entranceway. It looked impossibly small.

  He lowered the binocs, blinking. Zeta Reticuli burned low on the flat horizon, a fierce orange point that sliced through this planet's thin air.

  “God, I could do with a burn,” Reginri said.

  “None of that, you'll need your wits in there,” Sasuke said stiffly. “Anyway, there's no smoking blowby in these suits."

  “Right.” Reginri wondered if the goddamned money was worth all this. Back on Persenuae—he glanced up into the purpling sky and found it, a pearly glimmer nestling in closer to Zeta—it had seemed a good bet, a fast and easy bit of money, a kind of scientific outing with a tang of adventure. Better than agriwork, anyway. A far better payoff than anything else he could get with his limited training, a smattering of electronics and fabrication techniques. He even knew some math, though not enough to matter. And it didn't make any difference in this job, Sasuke had told him, even if math was the whole point of this thing.

  He smiled to himself. An odd thought, that squiggles on the page were a commercial item, something people on Earth would send a ramscoop full of microelectronics and bioengineered cells in exchange for—

  “Some help here, eh?” Sasuke said roughly.

  “Sorry."

  Reginri knelt and helped the man spool out the tapper lines, checking the connectors. Safely up the beach, beyond the first pale line of sand dunes, lay the packaged electronics gear and the crew, already in place, who would monitor while he and Vanleo were inside.

  As the two men unwound the cables, unsnarling the lines and checking the back
up attachments, Reginri glanced occasionally at the Drongheda. It was immense, far larger than he had imagined. The 3Ds simply didn't convey the massive feel of the thing. It wallowed in the shallows, now no more than two hundred meters away.

  “It's stopped moving,” he said.

  “Sure. It'll be there for days, by all odds.” Sasuke spoke without looking up. He inserted his diagnostic probe at each socket, watching the meters intently. He was methodical, sure of himself—quite the right sort of man to handle the technical end, Reginri thought.

  “That's the point, isn't it? I mean, the thing is going to stay put."

  “Sure."

  “So you say. It isn't going to roll over while we're in there, because it never has."

  Sasuke stopped working and scowled. Through his helmet bubble, Reginri could see the man's lips pressed tight together. “You fellows always get the shakes on the beach. It never fails. Last crew I had out here, they were crapping in their pants from the minute we sighted a Drongheda."

  “Easy enough for you to say. You're not going in."

  “I've been in, mister. You haven't. Do what we say, what Vanleo and I tell you, and you'll be all right."

  “Is that what you told the last guy who worked with you?"

  Sasuke looked up sharply. “Kaufmann? You talked to him?"

  “No. A friend of mine knows him."

  “Your friend keeps bad company."

  “Sure, me included."

  “I meant—"

  “Kaufmann didn't quit for no reason, you know."

  “He was a coward,” Sasuke said precisely.

  “The way he put it, he just wasn't fool enough to keep working this thing the way you want. With this equipment."

  “There isn't any other way."

  Reginri motioned seaward. “You could put something automated inside. Plant a sensor."

  “That will transmit out through thirty meters of animal fat? Through all that meat? Reliably? With a high bit rate? Ha!"

  Reginri paused. He knew it wasn't smart to push Sasuke this way, but the rumors he had heard from Kaufmann made him uneasy. He glanced back toward the lifeless land. Down the beach, Vanleo had stopped to inspect something, kneeling on the hard-packed sand. Studying a rock, probably—nothing alive scuttled or crawled on this beach.

  Reginri shrugged. “I can see that, but why do we have to stay in so long? Why not just go in, plant the tappers and get out?"

  “They won't stay in place. If the Drongheda moves even a little, they'll pop out."

  “Don't make ‘em so damned delicate."

  “Mister, you can't patch in with spiked nails. That's a neural terminus point you're going after, not a statphone connection."

  “So I have to mother it through? Sit there up in that huge gut and sweat it out?"

  “You're getting paid for it,” Sasuke said in clipped tones.

  “Maybe not enough."

  “Look, if you're going to bellyache—"

  Reginri shrugged. “Okay, I'm not a pro at this. I came mostly to see the Drongheda anyway. But once you look at it, that electronics rig of yours seems pretty inadequate. And if that thing out there decides to give me a squeeze—"

  “It won't. Never has."

  A short, clipped bark came over the earphones. It was Vanleo's laugh, ringing hollow in their helmets. Vanleo approached, striding smoothly along the water line. “It hasn't happened, so it won't? Bad logic. Simply because a series has many terms does not mean it is infinite. Nor that it converges."

  Reginri smiled warmly, glad that the other man was back. There was a remorseless quality about Sasuke that set his teeth on edge.

  “Friend Sasuke, don't conceal what we both know from this boy.” Vanleo clapped Sasuke on the back jovially. “The Drongheda are a cipher. Brilliant, mysterious, vast intellects—and it is presumptuous to pretend we understand anything about them. All we are able to follow is their mathematics—perhaps that is all they wish us to see.” A brilliant smile creased his face.

  Vanleo turned and silently studied the cables that played out from the dunes and into the surf.

  “Looks okay,” he said. “Tide's going out."

  He turned abruptly and stared into Reginri's eyes. “Got your nerve back now, boy? I was listening on suit audio."

  Reginri shuffled uneasily. Sasuke was irritating, but at least he knew how to deal with the man. Vanleo, though ... somehow Vanleo's steady, intent gaze unsettled him. Reginri glanced out at the Drongheda and felt a welling dread. On impulse he turned to Vanleo and said, “I think I'll stay on the beach."

  Vanleo's face froze. Sasuke made a rough spitting sound and began, “Another goddamned—” but Vanleo cut him off with a brusque motion of his hand.

  “What do you mean?” Vanleo said mildly.

  “I ... I don't feel so good about going inside."

  “Oh. I see."

  “I mean, I don't know if that thing isn't going to ... well, it's the first time I did this, and..."

  “I see."

  “Tell you what. I'll go out with you two, sure. I'll stay in the water and keep the cables from getting snarled—you know, the job you were going to do. That'll give me a chance to get used to the work. Then, next time..."

  “That might be years from now."

  “Well, that's right, but..."

  “You're endangering the success of the entire expedition."

  “I'm not experienced. What if...” Reginri paused. Vanleo had logic on his side, he knew. This was the first Drongheda they had been able to reach in over two years. Many of them drifted down the ragged coast, hugging the shallows. But most stayed only a day or two. This was the first in a long while that had moored itself offshore in a low, sheltered shoal. The satellite scan had picked it up, noted its regular pattern of movements that followed the tides. So Vanleo got the signal, alerted Reginri and the stand-by crew, and they lifted in a fast booster from Persenuae...

  “A boot in the ass is what he needs,” Sasuke said abruptly.

  Vanleo shook his head. “I think not,” he said.

  The contempt in Sasuke's voice stiffened Reginri's resolve. “I'm not going in."

  “Oh?” Vanleo smiled.

  “Sue me for breach of contract when we get back to Persenuae, if you want. I'm not doing it."

  “Oh, we'll do much more than that,” Vanleo said casually. “We'll transfer the financial loss of this expedition to your shoulders. There's no question it's your fault."

  “I—"

  “So you'll never draw full wages again, ever,” Vanleo continued calmly.

  Reginri moved his feet restlessly. There was a feeling of careful, controlled assurance in Vanleo that gave his words added weight. And behind the certainty of those eyes Reginri glimpsed something else.

  “I don't know...” He breathed deeply, trying to clear his head. “Guess I got rattled a little, there."

  He hesitated and then snorted self-deprecatingly. “I guess, I guess I'll be all right."

  Sasuke nodded, holding his tongue. Vanleo smiled heartily. “Fine. Fine. We'll just forget this little incident, then, eh?” Abruptly he turned and walked down the beach. His steps were firm, almost jaunty.

  III.

  An air squirrel glided in on the gathering afternoon winds. It swung out over the lip of the canyon, chattering nervously, and then coasted back to the security of the hotbush. The two humans watched it leisurely strip a seed pod and nibble away.

  “I don't understand why you didn't quit then,” Belej said at last. “Right then. On the beach. A lawsuit wouldn't stick, not with other crewmen around to fill in for you."

  Reginri looked at her blankly. “Impossible."

  “Why? You'd seen that thing. You could see it was dangerous."

  “I knew that before we left Persenuae."

  “But you hadn't seen it."

  “So what? I'd signed a contract."

  Belej tossed her head impatiently. “I remember you saying to me it was a kind of big fish. That's
all you said that night before you left. You could argue that you hadn't understood the danger..."

  Reginri grimaced. “Not a fish. A mammal."

  “No difference. Like some other fish back on Earth, you told me."

  “Like the humpback and the blue and the fin and the sperm whales,” he said slowly. “Before men killed them off, they started to suspect the blues might be intelligent."

  “Whales weren't mathematicians, though, were they?” she said lightly.

  “We'll never know, now."

  Belej leaned back into the matted brownish grass. Strands of black hair blew gently in the wind. “That Leo lied to you about that thing, the fish, didn't he?"

  “How?"

  “Telling you it wasn't dangerous."

  He sat upright in the grass and hugged his knees. “He gave me some scientific papers. I didn't read most of them—hell, they were clogged with names I didn't know, funny terms. That's what you never understood, Belej. We don't know much about Drongheda. Just that they've got lungs and a spine and come ashore every few years. Why they do even that, or what makes them intelligent—Vanleo spent thirty years on that. You've got to give him credit—"

  “For dragging you into it. Ha!"

  “The Drongheda never harmed anybody. Their eyes don't seem to register us. They probably don't even know we're there, and Vanleo's simple-minded attempts to communicate failed. He—"

  “If a well-meaning, blind giant rolls over on you,” she said, “you're still dead."

  Reginri snorted derisively. “The Drongheda balance on ventral flippers. That's how they keep upright in the shallows. Whales couldn't do that, or—"

  “You're not listening to me!” She gave him an exasperated glance.

  “I'm telling you what happened."

  “Go ahead, then. We can't stay out here much longer."

  He peered out at the wrinkled canyon walls. Lime-green fruit trees dotted the burnished rocks. The thickening pink haze was slowly creeping across the canyon floor, obscuring details. The airborne life that colored the clouds would coat the leathery trees and trigger the slow rhythms of seasonal life. Part of the sluggish, inevitable workings of Persenuae, he thought.